Kia ora koutou, welcome to another Inside Out from the Library Managers. There always seems to be a lot happening, even as we wind down to the end of the year. Let’s all take a moment to pause and congratulate ourselves on getting through a tough year and achieving lots of great things despite the many challenges.
LIANZA Conference – I watched several papers at the first ever fully virtual LIANZA Conference in early November. There was very active chat in most of the sessions, and good engagement from attendees. Most of the papers were pre-recorded, but presenters were often present online and could answer questions after the session if there was time. There is access to the conference papers for 2 months so I intend to go back and watch some more sessions later.
One of the most inspiring talks I watched was from Dany Miller-Kareko and Sharnae Inu about Te Paataka Koorero o Takaanini, which is a new library and community hub in South Auckland that opened in March 2021. The library is all open plan with no kaimahi workspaces and it also has a whare kai (kitchen stocked with food/drink!) for the community to use. It is an excellent example of a wonderful bicultural space created with lots of consultation with the local iwi and community.
Gender Pay Equity in Libraries – I attended a TEU online meeting which was seeking information from librarians about our experiences and thoughts on gender pay equity in our sector. The TEU is exploring raising a claim nationally in 2022 to look at this issue in Tertiary Libraries, so watch this space.
Mental Health workshop – I attended the Mental Health 101 Webinar last week. This course is new to UC this year and being offered through Learning and Development. It was a time to reflect about my own mental health self-care (which I don’t do often enough) and to develop confidence in understanding and responding to others experiences of mental health challenges. I also re-watched Lucy Hone’s TED talk on resilience which was mentioned in the workshop. I recommend both of these to those that are interested.
ITS Team – Information Technology Services are currently undergoing a major change to their team structure. Some roles will be disestablished by end of February 2022 and new Product Manager roles are currently being advertised. They are also renaming the team to Digital Services (sound familiar?) and renaming many of the roles. Library support will be aligned with the Research Experience team, where Margaret Adam (Library Programme Analyst) will sit. We currently sit under the IT Student Support team.
Ngā mihi nui,
Jenny